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■ 1S! 30\10•11LE DESIGNER FURNITURE.

Imported Baby and Children's Furniture and Accessories

When Your Child
Wants To Quit

PAMELA REDMOND SATRAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

I

Where safety, beauty and quality go hand in hand.

33226 S. Woodward • Birmingham • (248) 644-0525

schoolage

6 V,P*Z,.‘s

A' s

Our Imagination Highway' program fits the unique

perspective of schoolage children.

Our project approach

stimulates imaginations. With singing. Drawing. Acting

out different roles. At KinderCare, schoolage kids take their

THE APP LETREE

very own look at a really big world.

20

KinderCare
© 1995 KinderCare Learning Centers, Inc.

Offer limited.

Farinington Hills

Southfield

25005 Middlebelt Road
(810) 477-4040

25345 Evergreen Road
(810) 357-3390

West Bloomfield

Troy

6615 Middlebelt Road
(810) 855-1963

5135 Coolidge Highway
(810) 641-8480

t was meltdown time out-
side the boys' locker room
at the local Y. My 7-year-
old did not want to go to
his swimming 'class. And not
only did he not want to go to
his swimming class, he was
yelling, screaming, flailing, cry-
ing — making a huge scene
and doing whatever he thought
it would take to convince me
not to make him swim.
What was I going to do? I
had insisted, at the start of the
school year, that my son sign up
for some kind of regular physi-
cal activity. Soccer, gymnastics,
karate — I didn't care what it
was, as long as it got him mov-
ing around at least once a
week. A smart and friendly boy,
my son had plenty of friends
and was happy in school. If he
had any weakness, it was a ten-
dency to spend too much time
indoors as a couch potato.
So my son had chosen swim-
ming. The first week, every-
, thing was fine, or so I thought
But the second week, I was in
the city working and my son
had told the sitter he didn't feel
well enough to go swimming. I
suspected he simply did not
want to go to class, and told
him I expected him to swim
next week.
When next week arrived, I
made sure I was home so I
could take him to swimming
myself. When he complained
again of a stomach ache, I said if

Pamela Redmond Soften is a

contributing editor of Parent
ing magazine.

he was well enough to go to
school and watch television, he
was well enough to swim. He
complained throughout the car
trip to the class, but I insisted he
would swim and thought we
had the problem beat Until his
meltdown at the Y, that is.
I'd held firm until I saw my
little boy sobbing and shaking,
and reali z ed his resistance went
beyond some mere ploy to get
more time in front of the TV. I
led my son into a quiet corner
and asked him to try and tell
me exactly why he did not
want to swim.
There were a lot of reasons,
as it turned out He was afraid
of the locker room, where a
teen-age monitor barked orders
at the boys. He felt he should
have been placed in a higher
group. And he felt over-
whelmed by the large number
of kids in his class.
It was past zero hour and I
had to make a decision. As
much as I wanted to put my
arm around my nervous little
boy and lead him back to the
safety of home, I felt that letting
him give up would be the
wrong decision. A few years
ago in a similar situation, I had
no qualms about letting him
quit a class he hated. But now
at age 7, I felt that he had to
learn to stick with something
— even if he didn't love it
But neither did I feel willing
to feed my son to the wolves. I
wasn't ready to insist he follow
through with the lessons at any

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